


Waking

by Basingstoke



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-11-05
Updated: 2000-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 15:23:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Inspired by the Season 8 premiere but lacking spoilers.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Written for Mama Deb's birthday.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Waking

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Season 8 premiere but lacking spoilers.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Written for Mama Deb's birthday.

Skinner lies on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and although his body is too tired to move, his mind is keeping him awake.

 

 

They drove all day. They only stopped when neither of them could keep their eyes open. Now Scully's in the room next door and Skinner's lying on his bed in this cheap motel and they're both thinking of Mulder, Mulder, Mulder.

 

 

Maybe even the same thoughts of Mulder. Skinner didn't know. He's pretty sure that Scully never fucked Mulder against the clean white wall of her apartment, one hand on Mulder's loosened tie and the other on his long thigh--Scully's apartment doesn't have white walls, and--Skinner desperately needs sleep.

 

 

He rolls onto his side and slowly, painfully sits up. He leans over and unties his shoes and pries them off. He's wearing dark socks. Dark socks. Mulder told him once, "if you ever wear red socks to the office I'll suck you off in the fourth floor south wing handicapped stall." He's not sure if Mulder meant it--he probably did--he's never worn red socks to test it.

 

 

Jesus, Mulder. It's only been two days. He's sorry he ever wished for some peace and quiet. He's sorry he ever wanted Mulder to act normal for a change. He would give anything for a gleefully perverted whisper in his ear or a strange fact about the salivary glands of an Amazonian frog that proved the existence of ancient astronauts on Mars.

 

 

He's tired and feeling sorry for himself. He takes off his socks and lies back on the bed, unzipping his trousers. He does a horizontal shimmy to pull them from under his hips.

 

 

Mulder would laugh and have something cheeky to say. He tries to stop thinking of Mulder. Mulder and his quick smile, Mulder and his bad ties, Mulder's low voice, Mulder's soft hair, Mulder's strong hands--it's like trying not to think of pink elephants. He can't do it. He wishes he had some whiskey to knock himself out. It wouldn't take much more than a shot.

 

 

Skinner unbuttons his shirt as his eyes drift close. His glasses are on the nightstand already next to his gun and badge. It seems metaphorical somehow. Add a tie and there's his uniform; without it he's just a man, a man who can't sleep. Can't sleep. Can't stop thinking of Mulder.

 

 

Skinner thinks of Mulder as he shrugs out of his shirt, still horizontal, eyes closed, his shoulders rotating off the bed in sequence. He drops it over the side and now he's just in his boxers.

 

 

Mulder storming into his office armed with rumor and his righteous indignation. Mulder shouting, Mulder snarling. Mulder hunting. Mulder finding. Mulder pinning him to a wall, Mulder wrestling.

 

 

Mulder above him, Mulder below him, Mulder beside him, Mulder at his side. Mulder calling him in the middle of the night just to hear him growl his name. Now he's crying again, just one tear from each eye. He rubs his hands across his face and sits up.

 

 

He sits on the side of his bed, elbows on knees, face in his hands, feeling the tracks of two tears evaporate from the sides of his head. The salt trails leave tight-feeling lines on his temples.

 

 

He's forty-eight years old. Too old to be sitting alone in a hotel room crying over a man abducted by aliens and pursued by fellow FBI agents and shadow creepers. This was a young man's game. He believes now but he doesn't want to.

 

 

He believes for Mulder's sake. Mulder, Mulder, Mulder.

 

 

Skinner creeps under the musty covers. The light is off. The door is locked. He can't sleep. He can't sleep. Thinking of Mulder--

 

 

He gives in and it feels like a snap in his chest, like a shoulder back into its socket, like a dam bursting. He tosses the covers back and runs one hand down his chest. If this were Mulder's hand--then--it would stop somewhere not at all erogenous, like the rise of his rib cage over his stomach, and two fingers would rub a circle into his flesh around the spot where Mulder stared. Circle, gaze, circle, gaze, until the spot is hot and reddened from the attention and Skinner is growling Mulder's name through his teeth in arousal.

 

 

He doesn't have the gaze but he does have the fingers. He's rubbing, rubbing--then when Skinner growls enough, Mulder will raise his head and give him that enormous smile, his eyes dilated and full of wonder. "I never get tired of looking at you," he said once, and "I sometimes can't believe I'm here," he said another time; words that make Skinner's heart beat faster for the absolute sincerity of them.

 

 

Mulder never lies to him. Not about anything important.

 

 

He'll lean down for a kiss--and Mulder's lips aren't here but Skinner's hands are, so he touches his lips, soft and light as Mulder's touch. Then he'd shift down Skinner's body--and he doesn't have Mulder's mouth but he does have his hands, and he slides them both under the waistband of his boxer shorts, touching himself and feeling that first electric crackle of skin against sensitive skin.

 

 

Mulder's mouth--incredibly, Mulder's mouth is the only one that's ever been there, wrapped around Skinner's cock. In Vietnam it was hand jobs and the occasional quick fuck, and then Sharon, she was a nice girl and didn't do that. And that was it. Until Mulder.

 

 

Granted he had imagined Krycek's mouth wrapped around his cock, with the improbability of Skinner's hands simultaneously wrapped around Krycek's throat, but that was a product of a dark night's shameful anger and not something likely ever to happen.

 

 

So it was just Mulder's mouth, Mulder's tongue, the vibrations of Mulder's voice against delicate skin. Mulder rose clear as moonlight against the blackness of eyelid and night. Skinner reminded himself with his hands.

 

 

And that was enough--that was enough--that was enough. He came inside his boxers and collapsed against the bed.

 

 

Skinner opened his eyes and Mulder was still there. The midnight contours of the room gave him nothing to distract himself from memory. Mulder grinning down at him; Mulder kissing him intently; Mulder rubbing against him, Mulder shouting his name. Mulder always called him "Skinner" unless he was being a smartass; then he was "Walt."

 

 

Dammit. Skinner pulled off the boxers and tried to towel himself off. He tossed them in a random direction away from his shirt and trousers and stretched out between the sheets, uncomfortably naked and sticky. He crossed his forearms over his eyes and relaxed into the bed.

 

 

Mulder, Mulder, Mulder; he had to sleep, and then hunt for Mulder.

 

 

He had to sleep, and then--

 

 

He had to sleep.

 

 

He slept finally.

 

 

end.


End file.
